I’ve been giving honest answers to my nearly-5-year-old and nothing too awful seems to have happened so far. She’s quite interested in death—though so far she’s shown no interest in the idea of an afterlife—and nothing I’ve said to her on the subject has caused obvious trauma.
Here’s how I think I would have liked to have it explained to me when I was little, instead of hearing about heaven and hell and souls meeting Jesus. Note that this is a non-transhumanist explanation and doesn’t deal with the possibility of physical immortality, because I don’t think my mother was aware of that idea; but she certainly knew basic biology and could have given this explanation, if she hadn’t been motivated otherwise by religious faith:
“People are made of the same stuff as plants and bugs and slugs and mice. We live a lot longer than bugs and slugs and mice, though, and longer than a lot of plants, too. When we die, the stuff that we’re made of goes back into nature and gets turned into other living things. If someone dies and gets buried, eventually all the stuff that the person is made of gets turned into dirt, and then into bugs and plants and other living things.
“After death, the person isn’t there any more. It’s just like the tomato plants and the sunflowers in the garden: when winter comes, they die, and we dig the dead plants up and put them in the compost pile to become good dirt for next year. By the spring, the old dead plants are all gone; the bacteria and bugs and worms in the compost pile have eaten them all up and turned them into dirt.
“You could look through the whole compost pile and not find a leaf, or the sharp yellow smell of tomato plants: it’s all been turned into dirt. All the things that make a person who they are — their thoughts, their feelings, their abilities, all of it — all that disappears when they die, just like the leaves and the smell. What’s left behind is just the stuff they were made of, and that becomes dirt.
“There are a few things that last after death, though, besides just the stuff that a person is made of. A person’s children live on after them, like the seeds of last year’s plants. A person’s ideas and feelings can, too, if they record them: we can still know a lot about what Mark Twain thought, even though he died in 1910 and we can never talk to him — because he wrote it down. John Lennon died in 1980 but we can still hear his voice on records. And we can have memories of what a person has done; their accomplishments and how good of a person they were still last after they’re gone.”
Kids as young as 5 wonder about what happens after you die. Would you tell the truth to a 5 year old if you knew it would cause him significant long-term discomfort?
(Disclaimer: I am currently angry (both in a bad mood and angered by this), so correct for that.)
I don’t think anybody would want to be lied to about a world-spanning disaster that permanently anihilates everyone’s soul just to protect their feelings. Significant long-term discomfort is an appropriate reaction.
My limited understanding of the matter is that it’s way, way more important to a child’s sense of security to feel that their parents love them and that their home is a safe place than to not know the truth about death. So, I haven’t considered what I’d do in the counterfactual case that it turns out that people are actually harmed less by learning the truth when they’re older.
Do you have evidence that this particular truth will cause “significant long-term discomfort” to the 5 year old? My personal experience tells me otherwise.
What should we tell children who ask about death?
I’ve been giving honest answers to my nearly-5-year-old and nothing too awful seems to have happened so far. She’s quite interested in death—though so far she’s shown no interest in the idea of an afterlife—and nothing I’ve said to her on the subject has caused obvious trauma.
Here’s how I think I would have liked to have it explained to me when I was little, instead of hearing about heaven and hell and souls meeting Jesus. Note that this is a non-transhumanist explanation and doesn’t deal with the possibility of physical immortality, because I don’t think my mother was aware of that idea; but she certainly knew basic biology and could have given this explanation, if she hadn’t been motivated otherwise by religious faith:
“People are made of the same stuff as plants and bugs and slugs and mice. We live a lot longer than bugs and slugs and mice, though, and longer than a lot of plants, too. When we die, the stuff that we’re made of goes back into nature and gets turned into other living things. If someone dies and gets buried, eventually all the stuff that the person is made of gets turned into dirt, and then into bugs and plants and other living things.
“After death, the person isn’t there any more. It’s just like the tomato plants and the sunflowers in the garden: when winter comes, they die, and we dig the dead plants up and put them in the compost pile to become good dirt for next year. By the spring, the old dead plants are all gone; the bacteria and bugs and worms in the compost pile have eaten them all up and turned them into dirt.
“You could look through the whole compost pile and not find a leaf, or the sharp yellow smell of tomato plants: it’s all been turned into dirt. All the things that make a person who they are — their thoughts, their feelings, their abilities, all of it — all that disappears when they die, just like the leaves and the smell. What’s left behind is just the stuff they were made of, and that becomes dirt.
“There are a few things that last after death, though, besides just the stuff that a person is made of. A person’s children live on after them, like the seeds of last year’s plants. A person’s ideas and feelings can, too, if they record them: we can still know a lot about what Mark Twain thought, even though he died in 1910 and we can never talk to him — because he wrote it down. John Lennon died in 1980 but we can still hear his voice on records. And we can have memories of what a person has done; their accomplishments and how good of a person they were still last after they’re gone.”
How about we answer their questions truthfully and in a respectful manner?
It’s pretty clear to me that “what should we tell the children?” is always one of those questions where the obvious answer is the correct one.
Kids as young as 5 wonder about what happens after you die. Would you tell the truth to a 5 year old if you knew it would cause him significant long-term discomfort?
Does that which can be destroyed by the truth should be apply to a child’s sense of security?
(Disclaimer: I am currently angry (both in a bad mood and angered by this), so correct for that.)
I don’t think anybody would want to be lied to about a world-spanning disaster that permanently anihilates everyone’s soul just to protect their feelings. Significant long-term discomfort is an appropriate reaction.
My limited understanding of the matter is that it’s way, way more important to a child’s sense of security to feel that their parents love them and that their home is a safe place than to not know the truth about death. So, I haven’t considered what I’d do in the counterfactual case that it turns out that people are actually harmed less by learning the truth when they’re older.
Do you have evidence that this particular truth will cause “significant long-term discomfort” to the 5 year old? My personal experience tells me otherwise.
No since I only have one child and I didn’t tell him the truth about this.